The Ongoing Struggle

My incredibly busy week has finally come to a close. I do still have a couple more social obligations that will continue to distract me, but I should now have the time to stay at home and recover some mental bandwidth so I can return to work properly.

It's probably a good thing that I've been out of the house as much as I have been, though. Seasonals set in a bit early this year, and spending all this time with friends and family and hobbies has gone a very long way toward preventing me from rotting at home while staring at game script like it's supposed to do something on its own.

Spending all this time away from work has left me mildly unfamiliar with everything I was putting together, so the few chances I've had to open it up and work on the things that weren't quite operating the way they should be, I've had to spend more time re-learning my own script than actually making progress on it.

Which is originally where I wanted this post to end. I would've been a little upset with myself for the lack of meaningful progress over the past week, but I'd have resolved to put my nose back to the grindstone, get the training system properly implemented, and get to work on the rest of the new content for Redemption Harem v0.2. Maybe mention the new scenes that would be available or sharing thoughts about some of the ideas I've got for how to present the new quests.

Instead, the only individual I've ever banned for harassing me decided it was a good time to resume harassing me.

I'm not normally one to make my suffering a public matter. It's why I try to avoid talking about my financial struggles unless it's in aggregate, like the amount of money Maids & Masters cost me to make, or generalizations, like simply stating that I am struggling. It's also why I try to restrict any mention of my mental health to lines like the one in the second paragraph, or simply stating that treating myself better is something I have room to improve on.

Harassment, however, is not okay - no matter the subject or severity - and sometimes I need to put thoughts somewhere other than my head so I can stop myself from dwelling on them and spiraling.

So, if you want some drama, like context, or just don't have anything better to do, keep reading. 

If you don't care, this will hopefully be the last you or I ever hear of this, and you can stop reading here.

Just be warned that this is an exercise in venting for me. I no longer want these thoughts inside my skull, and this individual no longer deserves my kindness. I'm going to do my best to stick to facts, but this individual deleted most of their own posts, and having them blocked means I can't view what they didn't delete, so I have to operate from memories I'd rather not recall. You may be able to see them for yourself on my Patreon page, as I never deleted anything myself, but some of this back and forth is in a community chat, which you need to be an active Patron to see.

First, some context - this individual joined my Patreon page at the VIP tier before they were reworked. That meant this individual represented more than 20% of my monthly income at the time. While they were an active Patron, they became the first and only person to make fan-works (that I know of) for Maids & Masters. They stole some of my custom assets to create at least one of those fan-works, but if they'd asked, I'd have said they could use them with no strings attached, so I let it slide. Past that, the amount of money they were giving me left me in a position where I felt pointing out I should've been asked first was putting my livelihood at risk, so it wasn't worth the confrontation.

And I had reason to think it would be a confrontation. This individual regularly left comments that were generally the sort of mild offense that you'd expect out of the worst customer you have to deal with at your job. They're out of line, they're making everyone else the bad guy, they're telling you their way is better, and they're following all the rules so there's nothing to be done but try and avoid further interaction. This became regular, but again, this individual's pledge was the difference between being able to afford groceries and starving, so it was in my best interest to ignore them.

All of this coming from someone with a username that pushes an agenda. The sort of name people put in tiers where creators say the names of supporters of a certain tier out loud at the end of their videos, even if it's just a prank like Mike Oxlong. This wasn't a prank or anything positive, though. If their screen name was "Trans Rights Are Human Rights," I wouldn't complain. No, this individual's full username was "ByogenLivesMatter - HealinGood Precure is ableist bullshit - Junko Komura is objectively evil and caused real life damage!"

If you're somewhere between confused and bewildered, so was I. I still am, really. I can understand supporting a cause. Y'know, free Palestine, release the Epstein files, love is love. But this?

To save you the time, Healin' Good Pretty Cure is a standard magical girl anime. The Byogens are the bad guys. Junko Komura wrote it. I don't blame you if you've never heard of it; neither had I, and I've been part of the anime community for more than 20 years. I was even anime club president in high school.

So why the profanity and trying to cause harm to a person this individual likely never met and knew nothing about? Turns out there was a mild controversy among a small sub-set of fans over the anime's ending. The TL;DR there is that the main character was sick before becoming a magical girl and refused to let "king virus" inhabit her body after she defeats him. 

That's it. That's the whole story. This username is so long it breaks things on my Patreon page's back end when it appears. It hurls accusations and insults over a woman having bodily autonomy. The individual harassing me made their whole personality "why wouldn't the author force a terminally ill girl to be terminally ill again so the pandemic allegory wouldn't die?"

But I put up with it, because if they canceled their pledge, my income would destabilize, and I'd start having to choose between being able to eat and being able to leave the house. 

Eventually though, I did gain enough support to not be riding a knife's edge. While I'd normally say empathy is a good thing, this individual was trying to get me to rewrite the start of Maids & Masters so that rats wouldn't be an enemy and Master would love them instead of hating them. I never had any interest in doing this but I'd never said as much for fear of losing the income. Rats seem more important than people to whoever this individual is, so if I ever outright refused, that'd likely be all the excuse they needed, and I'd be trying to figure out how to keep my bills paid.

When I finally had the room to lose this individuals support, the next time one of these comments came up, I didn't have to be afraid of defending my creative decisions, so I explained myself.

This I remember clearly, and won't need to look back on old posts to give you the whole story.

It was on the poll for which character should be used in the promotional image for one of Maids & Masters' love shack updates. I mentioned in the original post that I'd re-render the image, both to re-frame it so Celine would fill the image in a wide-screen aspect ratio and to remove Master so you could see her.

Removing Master from the image was apparently this individual's breaking point. Removing Master wasn't malicious, it was so the image felt more like an invitation for you, the player, to spend a weekend at a cabin with Celine. Keeping the back of Master's head in the image would both make it harder to see Celine and at least partially remove the idea of that invitation, as there's already someone else there. 

This individual's response was to go off on a rant complete with examples to "prove" I was wrong, and when I pointed out the intent of the composition of the example, they proceeded to delete nearly every message they'd ever sent, cancel their pledge, and start hurling accusations of sexism in a community chat room within my Patreon page. Their tantrum needed to be in front of as many people as possible so I'd be thoroughly painted as the villain. My response at this point was to block the individual on Patreon and apologize to my community for the drama. As far as I was concerned, it ended there.

Unfortunately, it didn't end there. Once this individual realized they couldn't cause chaos and displeasure in a way that might directly damage my livelihood, they created a long post about how rats actually aren't disease-carrying pests, complete with a link to an article about how useful literal lab rats are.

Look, if you think rats are cute or maybe even have one as a pet, good for you. Most of my personal distaste for rodents comes from their propensity to break into my house and leave droppings all over my cookware if I don't keep traps baited.

For this individual, though, it apparently makes me evil on the same level as the terminally ill magical girl that refused to surrender her bodily autonomy to a living plague and the author who wrote that piece of fiction. You'd think that an individual so concerned with rats being an enemy in a video game and had so much empathy for the villains of an anime would object to lab testing, but the point wasn't that I'd wronged them or offended their lofty morals, it was to harass me. They'd posted the same article with the same rant on at least half a dozen of my post recent posts trying to promote Maids & Masters before I blocked them on Twitter, too.

For a few months, that was the end of it. They couldn't damage my income or harass me on Twitter.

Of course didn't sit right with this individual, so they made another account and joined my Patreon as a free follower. In hindsight, I should've blocked them again as soon as I saw it, but shame on me for thinking people should get second chances. My personal bias toward empathy was even rewarded, as they didn't say a single word for close to a year, maybe longer.

Until this weekend. I mentioned that I'm still struggling financially and was debating opening a new potential revenue stream. Obviously they couldn't tolerate me doing anything but struggling, so they copied a bunch of text so if I changed it they had proof I was being manipulative (I assume; my stance on giving me money has always been very transparent) and said it didn't make sense for me to offer commissions if people couldn't afford to pledge to a Patreon tier. 

I called them out for circumventing being banned from my page, but went on to explain myself anyway, just in case anyone else genuinely didn't understand what I'd said in the post.

This individual, true to their character, called me nasty and aggressive, called themselves polite, dug up the past, and said I'd lied and viciously attacked their moral character.

Needless to say, I've blocked the new account on Patreon and ensured they're blocked everywhere else I'm on social media to (hopefully) prevent any more attempts to undermine my trying to do more than just barely scrape by because I'm continuing to give away the vast majority of my hard work completely free, only asking for financial support from those who feel I truly deserve it and who can afford to provide it.

If you see anything this individual posts about negative interactions with me or reasons you shouldn't support me, you can assume it's a false allegation intended to cause me harm as revenge for the crime of having an artistic vision that doesn't line up exactly one-to-one with their world view.

And if you're the individual being talked about here, I sincerely hope you find the wherewithal to reflect on your actions and grow some accountability. The performative empathy you've been putting on display doesn't hide how toxic and manipulative you are. There's a decent person in there somewhere, but if you keep putting the blame for your own actions on everyone around you, they're never going to make it. I genuinely hope it isn't too late for them and you find the strength to change.

Return Post

I'm officially back home!

I've actually been home for a couple days, but this is a very busy week for me, so I sadly won't be able to get much development work done. Yesterday was the first day since I left that I had a full day to myself, and all I was really able to do development-wise is remind myself of the issues I ran into getting all the new training mechanics implemented, which means I need to re-learn how I built the system so I can fix those issues.

Though to be clear, those are very minor issues. It's things like the random chances for the "skip" option and the soft stat caps not quite correctly using the random numbers that get generated. All I need to do to fix it is do some math, adjust the conditional branches, and test it again. The main hurdle is the amount of time it takes to do all that math and test it again rather than not knowing how to fix it. The final mechanic will still work exactly as described over on the Patreon/Subscribestar post.

 

Speaking of, this Friday's post will likely be a poll about possible render commissions. While offering commissions is something I've generally avoided, the two biggest reasons I've been avoiding it are my confidence in my skill level and the time commitment. Now that I've been doing this for five years, I'm significantly more skilled and more confident in my skills, which leaves time as the last obstacle.

It is quite the obstacle, as time spent rendering commissions is time that could be spent developing instead, but the economy being as rough as it is understandably leaves fewer people able to support me, and in situations where someone has to choose between paying a bill, feeding themselves, or giving me a few dollars, the last thing I want them to choose is giving me a few dollars. Commission work would open up a new possible revenue stream for me, and would give those who can afford it a means of supporting me while still getting something they want.

I'm honestly still fairly torn on the idea, but that's why it'll get put to a poll. It'll be easier to make a decision after I know if there's any interest in it.

 

And hopefully by next week I'll have more time to put into work and I can start telling you about the new content that's planned for Redemption Harem v0.2.

Away Post

As much as I'd love to yap at you some more about everything I've been working on for the rest of Redemption Harem v0.2, most of what I've been working on are implementing the things I've already told you about and new maps, and it's kinda hard to say more about new maps than "they exist now."

 

I do have some news, though it isn't related to game development - I'll be out of town to help family for most of the next week. I'm trying to get something close enough to done that I can give a little bit of a preview for the Patreon and Subscribestar post this Friday, but training still isn't as fully implemented as it should be and I still have to pack today so I can leave tomorrow morning.

I'll still put something up if for no other reason than I know not everyone that goes to Patreon and Subscribestar also read this dev blog, but there's a good chance it ends up just being a text post instead of a teaser image like I want it to be.

 

Since being out of town means I can't get any more work done, next week's blog post is highly likely to just be "I'm back," but I hope I'll see you here next week anyway. 

Redemption Harem - Reworking Hunting for v0.2

Getting hunting fully implemented was surprisingly difficult. I had all the mechanics functioning on an individual test animal in time for the Patreon and Subscribestar post last Friday, but when I tried to get things copied into the existing animals, some were fleeing the moment I stepped into the map, some would stand completely still if another animal was triggered to flee, and all animals would respawn immediately on re-entering the map rather than disappearing until the next day. A few wouldn't even correctly despawn after fleeing.

 

It took all weekend, but all of that is fixed now. The reason some were fleeing immediately was due to a scripting issue that kept their self-switches activated, so all animals were reworked to have a fail-safe layer that turns those switches off. That didn't work at first because there was a coding issue that was operating the self-switch of other events, and that code has been updated to refer to "this map, this event" rather than specifying the map and event in question. With that (and some investigating that led to the fail-safe being implemented), multiple animals finally behaved the way they were supposed to, so all that was needed was to rework their drop tables to take your hunter level into account, then copy/paste the new reworked animals to replace the old ones.

I still need to do some testing to make sure I'm not missing something else that I haven't encountered, but reworking the code does mean I'm now able to do things like cause groups of animals to flee if you scare one of them. That's not a mechanic I intend to use often, but it's nice to have it as an option.

 

Hunting and farming were the two big new mechanics for v0.2 that were missing from v0.1, so from here on out, it's mostly new content. I say "mostly" because there are some additions to old content I need to make still.

For starters, Nadua doesn't really have her degrade or euphoria events. I think they can be triggered (I haven't tested it yet), but nothing happens, so those scenes need to be rendered and written. Related to that, since consent is important, I want to put in a choice for the player to either go along with the "attack" or literally fight them off, similar to how you get that option now if a captured character degrades to the point where they're "too far gone" and you have to fight them, but it's now your choice if you actually want to kill them. 

Off the back of that, I want to rework training a bit so you have the option of Sparring in addition to "Training." As is, you can spar with Nadua and you can "Train" with Asgina, but you can't "Train" with Nadua (you can replay the scene and restore her Condition if you haven't done your daily training yet, but she doesn't get stats from it) and you can't spar with Asgina. Sparring with Nadua is also just a fade to black and a random number roll. While I want to keep that as a "basic drills" type of option so you can skip having to actually fight, I'm also thinking through how to eventually let you teach your party members each other's skills, and sparring manually will likely play a role in that.

The basics of that idea right now are still pretty early in the idea phase, so I don't want to get too in-depth here just yet. For now, all you need to know about training updates is that you'll still have a "skip - fade to black" option, a manual option where different outcomes (such as knocking out your sparring partner vs "capturing" them vs losing the fight) will have different effects that you should have at least some control over, and the "training" option to replay a scene that will have a different effect from sparring if you haven't trained yet that day and no effect if you've already trained and are just replaying the scene for your own enjoyment.

Redemption Harem - Starting Development on v0.2

Development on v0.2 has actually been underway since the moment v0.1 was deployed, but who's counting?

 

Most of that time has been spent rebalancing things a bit - the Tie Down skill now upgrades the existing Bound state and only does damage if the target isn't Bound at all instead of being a damaging skill with a higher chance of Binding the target, for starters. That means you won't accidentally kill some of the weaker enemies after needing to use another damaging skill to get them Bound in the first place, and you won't need to spam that skill after spending eight turns Guarding in order to actually capture things.

Tie Down is also cheaper now that its use case is narrower, and you now get roughly double the TP from successfully parrying enemy attacks (even if you miss the parry and only guard). All together, these changes should make capturing enemies considerably less tedious without making an impromptu shibari session the most effective way to fight tougher enemies. 

 

Also, as a follow-up to the farming post from last Friday on Patreon and Subscribestar, I was able to get the farming system completely set up over the weekend and have been testing it to make sure I didn't miss a variable somewhere. I can't test every possible combination, as there are 16 plots and 8 available crops, and if my math is right, there are almost 13,000 of them. 

This is why I so deeply appreciate those of you who report any bugs you find.

I haven't found any bugs in it yet, though. If you read the post on Patreon/Substar, I was able to get everything set up as described there; you can plant whatever, and while it'll take longer to grow by default to offset the larger yield, you can water crops to speed up growth. 

The only potential issue is that I've been kicking around the idea of a weather system in my head to go along with the day/night system, and with how the garden is set up, I can't think of a way to make the crops count as automatically watered if it's raining. It won't be that hard to do the mechanical effect of watering the crops if it happens to be raining, but stopping you from watering them anyway to get double the effect is a bit trickier. That's a problem for the future, though; I'm still not totally sure I want to bother with a weather system anyway, since other than rain auto-watering your crops, there may not be any mechanical effect to it. And if I put the work into making a weather system, I'll want there to be some kind of mechanical effect, even if it's just characters being indoors when they're normally outside.

 

The actual next mechanic I'm working on is the Hunting system, which will be the first profession you have to find out in the world. Doing that won't be anything intense, you just won't start the game with it.

If you want to know more about that, go click one of the Patreon and/or Substar links and keep an eye out there. Depending on how much trouble it gives me, I might need to talk about something else while I work the kinks out of it, but I'm hoping to get far enough along to be able to tell you how those mechanics will work this Friday.